In this, the second installment of a two-part report of the 46th annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, the report unveils what Americans are thinking about public schools--in particular their views of teachers and the classrooms where they work. Some findings were surprising, others were not. For example,…

When New York state released the first results of the exams under the Common Core State Standards, many wrongly believed that the results showed dramatic declines in student achievement. A closer look at the results showed that student achievement may have increased. Another lesson from the exams is that states need to closely coordinate new data…

An undeniable issue of classroom management is the mix of white, middle-class teachers and administrators serving schools and classrooms with significant populations of male students of color. In some ways this is a widely researched and reported topic but rarely do we stop to consider the basic racial dynamic. A panel of African-American (mostly…

A teacher educator and a former student, now a classroom teacher, have a 14-year conversation about the deep dynamics of classroom management, which is more complicated than it first appears. The teacher educator introduces the classroom teacher to The Deal, an idea that can guide early-career teachers as well as veteran teachers. The Deal is, in…

Research tells us that children's social-emotional development can propel learning. A new program, SECURe, embeds that research into classroom management strategies that improve teaching and learning. Across all classrooms and grade levels, four principles of effective management are constant: Effective classroom management is based in…

Strong instructional materials are crucial to realizing the promise of the Common Core State Standards. Research suggests that the choice of instructional materials can have an impact as large as or larger than the impact of teacher quality. Unfortunately, many popular textbooks are not aligned to the new standards, leaving educators scrambling.…

Intentionally developing the leadership capacity of all students is a necessary requirement for schools around the world. The Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, N.C., has been at the center of this work and presents three schools as examples: Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, N.C., the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South…

Universal teacher residency would benefit the teaching profession and ultimately the education of our children. We have yet to work out the fine details, but there is nothing more important than developing robust residency schools where young educators go between their undergraduate preparation and their arrival in the classroom as autonomous…

Technology alone won't be enough to improve teaching and learning to where it needs to be for 21st century skills. Where it is being done successfully, teachers collectively share a vision of promoting deeper learning in all their students, and have collaboratively redesigned the role of the teacher to that of facilitator who uses technology…

The 46th Annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes toward the Public Schools reveals that Americans say they know a lot more this year about the Common Core State Standards than they indicated a year ago, and they like it a lot less. Americans also say local school boards should have the greatest influence in deciding what is taught in…

The tests we use to evaluate student achievement may well be sound measures of what students know, but they are faulty indicators at best of how well they have been taught. A remedy to this this situation of judging teachers by the performance of their students on high-stakes tests may be in hand already. We should look to the methods successfully…

When writing projects have an authentic reader beyond the classroom teacher, students can see a direct connection between their lives and their literacy development. That connection is key to learning engagement and motivation. Using the inquiry model to teach technical writing is also important since students' lives outside school are filled…

If educators want to engage girls in learning, they must align teaching practices with girls' specific needs. In a study modeled after Reichert and Hawley's study of boys, the authors learned that lessons with hands-on learning, elements of creativity, multimodal projects, and class discussions all worked to stimulate girls'…

Educators visit India to spread expertise and learn a more important lesson in community. They hadn't anticipated the quiet successes in the schools and classrooms they visited, causing them nearly overnight to switch from being experts to novices. No matter the socioeconomic status of the school, most striking was the high value placed on…

Educators often think of themselves as instilling ideas and learning in others through teaching and research. Teaching occurs inside classrooms or sometimes in hallways, and research is reported in academic journals or scholarly books. Most teachers say they care about making change in the nation and the world, but if they're only teaching in…